A combat sport consists of two or more players engaging in a form of controlled combat meant to simulate various aspects of genuine fighting. The format of any combat sport attempts to decide quantitatively the winner of a match by applying positive or negative point values to prescribed events in a combat match, such as a player losing a point when he falls in boxing, or when a player is awarded points for delivering a successful kick to the opponent in taekwondo. The specifics of all scoring schemes are many and vary widely but generally follow the premise that the contestant or combatant or player with the higher score at the end of the allotted time is the winner, unless the match is decided by knockout or disqualification, or some other instant win criterion, such as the scoring of an “Ippon” in judo.
Many combat or martial arts disciplines have specific limiting criteria for what is and is not allowable as a scoring action, as well as what is and is not a scoring zone on an opponent. In combat sports, for example taekwondo, which utilize protective gear (such as body protectors, chest protectors and trunk protectors) to cover vital organs, colored zones of the protective gear, which often denote the designation of the player as a color, also often define valid scoring areas.
Currently, and in recent decades, many of the scoring methods in combat sports have undergone technical upgrades and stylistic changes, designed to make matches fairer by reducing and/or removing human bias, making them more adaptable to various strategies, body types and personal styles of the combatants, and making them more intuitive and exciting for modern audiences. Some small changes have been successful, while most have not, resulting in various combat disciplines looking much the same and possessing many of the same unresolved problems.
Using a point system to determine a winner of a combat sport is still very subjective, and the point value attributed to any action is entirely subjective and at times artificial, having little or no basis in any real world qualities to derive that value. For instance, in taekwondo, a punch currently counts for a 1-point value, while a kick may be attributed a 4-point value. This scoring method does not take into account any other qualities of the attacks, meaning for example that a punch, twice as powerful and damaging than a less effective kick, would still register ¼th the value of the less effective kick. Therefore, athletes (combatants and players of combat sports) are often encouraged by the current scoring methods to use less effective or inappropriate combative techniques, which usually incur more points, whether or not it is an intended aspect of the scoring method. This is a flawed facet of scoring which no present method or system has successfully overcome. Prior publications that have attempted to correct some facets of the issues presented here, include those described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,891,231 B2, EP 0458853 B1, WO2010005169A1, U.S. Pat. No. 8,021,281 B2.
There is a need for a scoring method for combat sports that takes into account the power of a technique when assessing a scoring value.
Nearly all combat disciplines feature an inherent bias toward a prescribed style, despite the full breadth of strategy and personal choice technically allowable under their rules. For instance, while it is fully legal in a taekwondo match to punch the opponent in the torso, the rate of successfully scoring with a punch has been dismally low compared to the rate of successfully scoring with a kick when judged by humans, due to the unique emphasis placed on kicking in taekwondo instruction. Existing scoring solutions, however, have failed to take into account the stylistic differences between the “letter” and the “spirit” of the rules by which humans inherently and often subconsciously operate, to the dissatisfaction of spectators, participants, and sport organizers, despite varied levels of success in technical adherence to the formal enumerated rule set. This results in undesirable behavior through the use of unintuitive, unattractive, and often combatively ineffective attack methods to satisfy the technicalities of the scoring criteria, now bereft of human interpretation in their scoring, and create scores of which humans disapprove.
In taekwondo, such attacks are colloquially known as “PSS kicks”, named after the “Protective Scoring System” that is tricked into rewarding improper scores. In standard practice in taekwondo, the PSS has now replaced the scoring duty of human judges, and as such, there exists no person with the authority to undo, compensate for, or prevent the inaccuracies of the rigidly interpreted scoring.
There is a need for a method of determining if an action performed in the course of the match is appropriate of a prescribed style, and/or to adjust the value of any action to align with the human interpretation of a combat sport rule set.
Many martial arts schools suffer from low student enrollment and retention. This may be alleviated by an increased perception of personal student growth through personal statistics. There is a need for an easy to use system that provides data associated with performance of a combat or martial arts player. There is a need for a combat sport scoring system that may operate with or without an external computer, and is reasonably priced.
There is a need for a data collection and display system to reduce subjectivity in scoring methods. There is a need for a body protector for combat sports with an impact sensor and a display area integral with the body protector to display data associated with the combat sport and the combatant.